Best Leisure Activity (2006)

Mushroom Pickin'

Come on -- the beach is way too obvious. Instead, how about indulging in an age-old pastime that, thanks to a legal loophole, remains somehow technically aboveboard in Florida. For decades, hippies living in the Gulf Coast states have known in which fields to find the hallucinogenic psilocybe cubensis 'shroom, which tends to grow right around the fragrant patties deposited by grazing cows. It's an elaborate ritual, finding the white-capped mushrooms after a heavy rain, avoiding gopher holes, rattlesnakes, roaming bulls, armed farmers, and the like, clipping the little blue stems with scissors, creeping back over the fence unseen... but since the fungus is so literally among us, Tallahassee can't really bust everyone who has them growing on their property. So having a small amount of fresh 'shrooms isn't a crime. Drying them out, however, is (so is trespassing), so it's sort of a stealth activity. That fresh mushroom taste isn't for everyone, though.